As part of some blog catch-up this Sunday, I wanted to pick back up on a story I wrote about last month about fan response to the firing of actor Scott Bryce on As the World Turns.
Fan campaigns have launched Web sites, petitions, and mailing
campaigns, as soap fans are so quick to do when they dislike a
decisions made by soap opera producers.

Now, with Bryce doing a fairly candid interview with well-known soap opera columnist Michael Logan about the situation for TV Guide, fans have had much of their sentiment confirmed by the actor himself.

In my post last month, I wrote:

With no word coming forward on why he was let go, other
than rumors that he was fired over the phone during the holidays, the
usually-divisive online ATWT fan culture has largely come together in
their stance on Bryce's firing (although there are still a few fans out
there who, because of the fan wars between characters Craig Montgomery
and Paul Ryan, are happy to see the Craig character leave Oakdale).

One of the reasons for this fan response is due to the fact that
Bryce was let go mid-contract, rather than he and the show not coming
to terms, as is the case with several other recent and upcoming
departures for the show.

The fan petition, available here, has garnered a few hundred more signatures in the past couple of weeks, and the campaign includes their main site, a MySpace page, and a YouTube video, as well as dozens if not hundreds of fan threads like this one from Procter & Gamble Productions' own discussion boards. The campaign has been written about in Soap Opera Digest,
among other places, and although the outrage has died down some after a
few weeks have passed, there are still a number of viewers trying to
show their support for Scott.

One of the things that particularly excited fans was that Bryce mentioned
the nickname the online fan community had given to one of his recent
storylines, which had been called "The Quad from Hell" by fans.

Bryce said:

I've had dozens of relationships with executive producers
and this one, with Chris Goutman, was odd and very disconnected. I
think we had an inherent disagreement or a different vision of who
Craig is. The plots on the show are so much darker than they used to be
-- dead babies, pornography, methamphetamines -- and maybe I didn't fit
into that vision. It's not the ATWT I remember from those many
years ago. Chris would say to me, "This is your character, run with
it." But when I did he never seemed pleased. Craig, as I understood
him, has a need for family and love and fulfillment, and at all costs,
which is what creates all the mayhem and madness in his life. Yes, he's
a villain but he doesn't know that.

For fans of soaps, where there is often a black box around the
industry and only unofficial anonymous "insider" posts online to
provide context for these issues, an interview like this is rare to
come by, especially since many fans feel the soap opera press rarely
provides the type of deep insight into the industry that fans want to
know.

That Bryce was so candid about the situation after the fan fervor
has only served to deepen fan support for him, even as it probably made
it even more unlikely he will return to the show anytime soon.

By the way, see this post from back in 2006 for another situation from As the World Turns
where an actor was candid to fans. In this case, actress Ellen Dolan
wrote to fans to rally them together about the treatment of female
characters on the show, saying she believed the show belonged to the
fans and that they should demand better writing for stronger female
characters.

Welcome!

Past Blast

Chandler Massey (ex-Will) and Casey Deidrick (ex-Chad) of Days of our Lives are two rock' in dudes. The formers suds stars have been working non-stop since leaving the show on recording a song for people living with cystic fibrosis, and they recently released a video doing a cover of Miley Cyrus's number one hit "Wrecking Ball," which I may add is a must see.

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